University of Virginia Library

22. CHAPTER XXII.
IN THE POLITE SPIRIT OF THE TUSCULAN DISPUTATIONS.

—“`Philosophical Intelligence Office'—novel
idea! But how did you come to dream that I wanted
anything in your absurd line, eh?”

About twenty minutes after leaving Cape Giradeau,
the above was growled out over his shoulder by the Missourian
to a chance stranger who had just accosted
him; a round-backed, baker-kneed man, in a mean five-dollar
suit, wearing, collar-wise by a chain, a small brass
plate, inscribed P. I. O., and who, with a sort of canine
deprecation, slunk obliquely behind.

“How did you come to dream that I wanted anything
in your line, eh?”

“Oh, respected sir,” whined the other, crouching a
pace nearer, and, in his obsequiousness, seeming to wag
his very coat-tails behind him, shabby though they were,
“oh, sir, from long experience, one glance tells me the
gentleman who is in need of our humble services.”

“But suppose I did want a boy—what they jocosely
call a good boy—how could your absurd office help me?
—Philosophical Intelligence Office?”

“Yes, respected sir, an office founded on strictly philosophical
and physio—”

“Look you—come up here—how, by philosophy or
physiology either, make good boys to order? Come up
here. Don't give me a crick in the neck. Come up
here, come, sir, come,” calling as if to his pointer.
“Tell me, how put the requisite assortment of good
qualities into a boy, as the assorted mince into the
pie?”

“Respected sir, our office—”

“You talk much of that office. Where is it? On
board this boat?”

“Oh no, sir, I just came aboard. Our office—”

“Came aboard at that last landing, eh? Pray, do
you know a herb-doctor there? Smooth scamp in a
snuff-colored surtout?”

“Oh, sir, I was but a sojourner at Cape Giradeau.
Though, now that you mention a snuff-colored surtout, I
think I met such a man as you speak of stepping ashore
as I stepped aboard, and 'pears to me I have seen him
somewhere before. Looks like a very mild Christian
sort of person, I should say. Do you know him, respected
sir?”

“Not much, but better than you seem to. Proceed
with your business.”

With a low, shabby bow, as grateful for the permission,
the other began: “Our office—”

“Look you,” broke in the bachelor with ire, “have
you the spinal complaint? What are you ducking and
groveling about? Keep still. Where's your office?”

“The branch one which I represent, is at Alton, sir,
in the free state we now pass,” (pointing somewhat
proudly ashore).

“Free, eh? You a freeman, you flatter yourself?
With those coat-tails and that spinal complaint of servility?
Free? Just cast up in your private mind who
is your master, will you?”

“Oh, oh, oh! I don't understand—indeed—indeed.
But, respected sir, as before said, our office, founded on
principles wholly new—”

“To the devil with your principles! Bad sign when
a man begins to talk of his principles. Hold, come
back, sir; back here, back, sir, back! I tell you no
more boys for me. Nay, I'm a Mede and Persian. In
my old home in the woods I'm pestered enough with
squirrels, weasels, chipmunks, skunks. I want no more
wild vermin to spoil my temper and waste my substance.
Don't talk of boys; enough of your boys; a
plague of your boys; chilblains on your boys! As for
Intelligence Offices, I've lived in the East, and know
'em. Swindling concerns kept by low-born cynics, under
a fawning exterior wreaking their cynic malice upon
mankind. You are a fair specimen of 'em.”

“Oh dear, dear, dear!”

“Dear? Yes, a thrice dear purchase one of your
boys would be to me. A rot on your boys!”

“But, respected sir, if you will not have boys, might
we not, in our small way, accommodate you with a
man?”

“Accommodate? Pray, no doubt you could accommodate

me with a bosom-friend too, couldn't you?
Accommodate! Obliging word accommodate: there's
accommodation notes now, where one accommodates
another with a loan, and if he don't pay it pretty quickly,
acommodates him with a chain to his foot. Accommodate!
God forbid that I should ever be accommodated.
No, no. Look you, as I told that cousin-german of
yours, the herb-doctor, I'm now on the road to get me
made some sort of machine to do my work. Machines for
me. My cider-mill—does that ever steal my cider? My
mowing-machine—does that ever lay a-bed mornings?
My corn-husker—does that ever give me insolence?
No: cider-mill, mowing-machine, corn-husker—all faithfully
attend to their business. Disinterested, too; no
board, no wages; yet doing good all their lives long;
shining examples that virtue is its own reward—the only
practical Christians I know.”

“Oh dear, dear, dear, dear!”

“Yes, sir:—boys? Start my soul-bolts, what a difference,
in a moral point of view, between a corn-husker
and a boy! Sir, a corn-husker, for its patient continuance
in well-doing, might not unfitly go to heaven. Do
you suppose a boy will?”

“A corn-husker in heaven! (turning up the whites
of his eyes). Respected sir, this way of talking as if
heaven were a kind of Washington patent-office museum—oh,
oh, oh!—as if mere machine-work and puppet-work
went to heaven—oh, oh, oh! Things incapable
of free agency, to receive the eternal reward of well-doing—oh,
oh, oh!”

“You Praise-God-Barebones you, what are you groaning
about? Did I say anything of that sort? Seems to
me, though you talk so good, you are mighty quick at a
hint the other way, or else you want to pick a polemic
quarrel with me.”

“It may be so or not, respected sir,” was now the demure
reply; “but if it be, it is only because as a soldier
out of honor is quick in taking affront, so a Christian
out of religion is quick, sometimes perhaps a little too
much so, in spying heresy.”

“Well,” after an astonished pause, “for an unaccountable
pair, you and the herb-doctor ought to yoke
together.”

So saying, the bachelor was eying him rather sharply,
when he with the brass plate recalled him to the discussion
by a hint, not unflattering, that he (the man with
the brass plate) was all anxiety to hear him further on
the subject of servants.

“About that matter,” exclaimed the impulsive bachelor,
going off at the hint like a rocket, “all thinking
minds are, now-a-days, coming to the conclusion—one
derived from an immense hereditary experience—see
what Horace and others of the ancients say of servants—
coming to the conclusion, I say, that boy or man, the
human animal is, for most work-purposes, a losing animal.
Can't be trusted; less trustworthy than oxen;
for conscientiousness a turn-spit dog excels him. Hence
these thousand new inventions—carding machines, horseshoe
machines, tunnel-boring machines, reaping machines,
apple-paring machines, boot-blacking machines,

sewing machines, shaving machines, run-of-errand machines,
dumb-waiter machines, and the Lord-only-knows-what
machines; all of which announce the era when
that refractory animal, the working or serving man,
shall be a buried by-gone, a superseded fossil. Shortly
prior to which glorious time, I doubt not that a price
will be put upon their peltries as upon the knavish
`possums,' especially the boys. Yes, sir (ringing his
rifle down on the deck), I rejoice to think that the
day is at hand, when, prompted to it by law, I shall
shoulder this gun and go out a boy-shooting.”

“Oh, now! Lord, Lord, Lord!—But our office, respected
sir, conducted as I ventured to observe—”

“No, sir,” bristlingly settling his stubble chin in his
coon-skins. “Don't try to oil me; the herb-doctor
tried that. My experience, carried now through a course
—worse than salivation—a course of five and thirty
boys, proves to me that boyhood is a natural state of
rascality.”

“Save us, save us!”

“Yes, sir, yes. My name is Pitch; I stick to what I
say. I speak from fifteen years' experience; five and
thirty boys; American, Irish, English, German, African,
Mulatto; not to speak of that China boy sent me by
one who well knew my perplexities, from California;
and that Lascar boy from Bombay. Thug! I found
him sucking the embryo life from my spring eggs. All
rascals, sir, every soul of them; Caucasian or Mongol.
Amazing the endless variety of rascality in human nature
of the juvenile sort. I remember that, having discharged,

one after another, twenty-nine boys—each, too,
for some wholly unforeseen species of viciousness peculiar
to that one peculiar boy—I remember saying to myself:
Now, then, surely, I have got to the end of the list,
wholly exhausted it; I have only now to get me a boy,
any boy different from those twenty-nine preceding
boys, and he infallibly shall be that virtuous boy I have
so long been seeking. But, bless me! this thirtieth boy—
by the way, having at the time long forsworn your intelligence
offices, I had him sent to me from the Commissioners
of Emigration, all the way from New York,
culled out carefully, in fine, at my particular request,
from a standing army of eight hundred boys, the
flowers of all nations, so they wrote me, temporarily in
barracks on an East River island—I say, this thirtieth
boy was in person not ungraceful; his deceased mother
a lady's maid, or something of that sort; and
in manner, why, in a plebeian way, a perfect Chesterfield;
very intelligent, too—quick as a flash. But,
such suavity! `Please sir! please sir!' always bowing
and saying, `Please sir.' In the strangest way, too, combining
a filial affection with a menial respect. Took
such warm, singular interest in my affairs. Wanted to
be considered one of the family—sort of adopted son of
mine, I suppose. Of a morning, when I would go out
to my stable, with what childlike good nature he would
trot out my nag, `Please sir, I think he's getting fatter
and fatter.' `But, he don't look very clean, does
he?' unwilling to be downright harsh with so affectionate
a lad; `and he seems a little hollow inside the
haunch there, don't he? or no, perhaps I don't see plain
this morning.' `Oh, please sir, it's just there I think
he's gaining so, please.' Polite scamp! I soon found
he never gave that wretched nag his oats of nights;
didn't bed him either. Was above that sort of chambermaid
work. No end to his willful neglects. But the
more he abused my service, the more polite he grew.”

“Oh, sir, some way you mistook him.”

“Not a bit of it. Besides, sir, he was a boy who under
a Chesterfieldian exterior hid strong destructive propensities.
He cut up my horse-blanket for the bits of
leather, for hinges to his chest. Denied it point-blank.
After he was gone, found the shreds under his mattress.
Would slyly break his hoe-handle, too, on purpose to
get rid of hoeing. Then be so gracefully penitent for
his fatal excess of industrious strength. Offer to mend
all by taking a nice stroll to the nighest settlement—
cherry-trees in full bearing all the way—to get the broken
thing cobbled. Very politely stole my pears, odd
pennies, shillings, dollars, and nuts; regular squirrel at
it. But I could prove nothing. Expressed to him my
suspicions. Said I, moderately enough, `A little less
politeness, and a little more honesty would suit me better.'
He fired up; threatened to sue for libel. I won't
say anything about his afterwards, in Ohio, being found
in the act of gracefully putting a bar across a rail-road
track, for the reason that a stoker called him the rogue
that he was. But enough: polite boys or saucy boys,
white boys or black boys, smart boys or lazy boys,
Caucasian boys or Mongol boys—all are rascals.”

“Shocking, shocking!” nervously tucking his frayed
cravat-end out of sight. “Surely, respected sir, you labor
under a deplorable hallucination. Why, pardon again,
you seem to have not the slightest confidence in boys. I
admit, indeed, that boys, some of them at least, are but
too prone to one little foolish foible or other. But, what
then, respected sir, when, by natural laws, they finally
outgrow such things, and wholly?”

Having until now vented himself mostly in plaintive
dissent of canine whines and groans, the man with the
brass-plate seemed beginning to summon courage to a
less timid encounter. But, upon his maiden essay, was
not very encouragingly handled, since the dialogue immediately
continued as follows:

“Boys outgrow what is amiss in them? From bad
boys spring good men? Sir, `the child is father of the
man;' hence, as all boys are rascals, so are all men.
But, God bless me, you must know these things better
than I; keeping an intelligence office as you do; a business
which must furnish peculiar facilities for studying
mankind. Come, come up here, sir; confess you know
these things pretty well, after all. Do you not know
that all men are rascals, and all boys, too?”

“Sir,” replied the other, spite of his shocked feelings
seeming to pluck up some spirit, but not to an indiscreet
degree, “Sir, heaven be praised, I am far, very far from
knowing what you say. True,” he thoughtfully continued,
“with my associates, I keep an intelligence
office, and for ten years, come October, have, one way
or other, been concerned in that line; for no small period

in the great city of Cincinnati, too; and though, as
you hint, within that long interval, I must have had
more or less favorable opportunity for studying mankind—in
a business way, scanning not only the faces,
but ransacking the lives of several thousands of human
beings, male and female, of various nations, both employers
and employed, genteel and ungenteel, educated
and uneducated; yet—of course, I candidly admit, with
some random exceptions, I have, so far as my small observation
goes, found that mankind thus domestically
viewed, confidentially viewed, I may say; they, upon the
whole—making some reasonable allowances for human
imperfection—present as pure a moral spectacle as the
purest angel could wish. I say it, respected sir, with
confidence.”

“Gammon! You don't mean what you say. Else
you are like a landsman at sea: don't know the ropes,
the very things everlastingly pulled before your eyes.
Serpent-like, they glide about, traveling blocks too
subtle for you. In short, the entire ship is a riddle.
Why, you green ones wouldn't know if she were unseaworthy;
but still, with thumbs stuck back into your
arm-holes, pace the rotten planks, singing, like a fool,
words put into your green mouth by the cunning owner,
the man who, heavily insuring it, sends his ship to be
wrecked—

and, sir, now that it occurs to me, your talk, the
whole of it, is but a wet sheet and a flowing sea, and
an idle wind that follows fast, offering a striking contrast
to my own discourse.”

“Sir,” exclaimed the man with the brass-plate, his
patience now more or less tasked, “permit me with
deference to hint that some of your remarks are injudiciously
worded. And thus we say to our patrons, when
they enter our office full of abuse of us because of some
worthy boy we may have sent them—some boy wholly
misjudged for the time. Yes, sir, permit me to remark
that you do not sufficiently consider that, though a small
man, I may have my small share of feelings.”

“Well, well, I didn't mean to wound your feelings at
all. And that they are small, very small, I take your
word for it. Sorry, sorry. But truth is like a thrashing-machine;
tender sensibilities must keep out of the
way. Hope you understand me. Don't want to hurt
you. All I say is, what I said in the first place, only
now I swear it, that all boys are rascals.”

“Sir,” lowly replied the other, still forbearing like an
old lawyer badgered in court, or else like a good-hearted
simpleton, the butt of mischievous wags, “Sir, since
you come back to the point, will you allow me, in my
small, quiet way, to submit to you certain small, quiet
views of the subject in hand?”

“Oh, yes!” with insulting indifference, rubbing his
chin and looking the other way. “Oh, yes; go on.”

“Well, then, respected sir,” continued the other, now
assuming as genteel an attitude as the irritating set of
his pinched five-dollar suit would permit; “well, then,
sir, the peculiar principles, the strictly philosophical

principles, I may say,” guardedly rising in dignity, as
he guardedly rose on his toes, “upon which our office is
founded, has led me and my associates, in our small,
quiet way, to a careful analytical study of man, conducted,
too, on a quiet theory, and with an unobtrusive
aim wholly our own. That theory I will not now at
large set forth. But some of the discoveries resulting
from it, I will, by your permission, very briefly mention;
such of them, I mean, as refer to the state of boyhood
scientifically viewed.”

“Then you have studied the thing? expressly studied
boys, eh? Why didn't you out with that before?”

“Sir, in my small business way, I have not conversed
with so many masters, gentlemen masters, for nothing.
I have been taught that in this world there is a precedence
of opinions as well as of persons. You have
kindly given me your views, I am now, with modesty,
about to give you mine.”

“Stop flunkying—go on.”

“In the first place, sir, our theory teaches us to proceed
by analogy from the physical to the moral. Are
we right there, sir? Now, sir, take a young boy, a
young male infant rather, a man-child in short—what
sir, I respectfully ask, do you in the first place remark?”

“A rascal, sir! present and prospective, a rascal!”

“Sir, if passion is to invade, surely science must
evacuate. May I proceed? Well, then, what, in the
first place, in a general view, do you remark, respected
sir, in that male baby or man-child?”

The bachelor privily growled, but this time, upon the

whole, better governed himself than before, though not,
indeed, to the degree of thinking it prudent to risk an
articulate response.

“What do you remark? I respectfully repeat.”
But, as no answer came, only the low, half-suppressed
growl, as of Bruin in a hollow trunk, the questioner continued:
“Well, sir, if you will permitme, in my small way,
to speak for you, you remark, respected sir, an incipient
creation; loose sort of sketchy thing; a little preliminary
rag-paper study, or careless cartoon, so to speak, of a
man. The idea, you see, respected sir, is there; but, as
yet, wants filling out. In a word, respected sir, the
man-child is at present but little, every way; I don't
pretend to deny it; but, then, he promises well, does he
not? Yes, promises very well indeed, I may say. (So,
too, we say to our patrons in reference to some noble
little youngster objected to for being a dwarf.) But, to
advance one step further,” extending his thread-bare leg,
as he drew a pace nearer, “we must now drop the
figure of the rag-paper cartoon, and borrow one—to use
presently, when wanted—from the horticultural kingdom.
Some bud, lily-bud, if you please. Now, such
points as the new-born man-child has—as yet not all
that could be desired, I am free to confess—still, such
as they are, there they are, and palpable as those of an
adult. But we stop not here,” taking another step.
“The man-child not only possesses these present points,
small though they are, but, likewise—now our horticultural
image comes into play—like the bud of the lily,
he contains concealed rudiments of others; that is,

points at present invisible, with beauties at present
dormant.”

“Come, come, this talk is getting too horticultural
and beautiful altogether. Cut it short, cut it short!”

“Respected sir,” with a rustily martial sort of gesture,
like a decayed corporal's, “when deploying into the
field of discourse the vanguard of an important argument,
much more in evolving the grand central forces
of a new philosophy of boys, as I may say, surely you
will kindly allow scope adequate to the movement in
hand, small and humble in its way as that movement
may be. Is it worth my while to go on, respected
sir?”

“Yes, stop flunkying and go on.”

Thus encouraged, again the philosopher with the brass-plate
proceeded:

“Supposing, sir, that worthy gentleman (in such
terms, to an applicant for service, we allude to some
patron we chance to have in our eye), supposing, respected
sir, that worthy gentleman, Adam, to have been
dropped overnight in Eden, as a calf in the pasture;
supposing that, sir—then how could even the learned
serpent himself have foreknown that such a downy-chinned
little innocent would eventually rival the goat
in a beard? Sir, wise as the serpent was, that eventuality
would have been entirely hidden from his wisdom.”

“I don't know about that. The devil is very sagacious.
To judge by the event, he appears to have
understood man better even than the Being who made
him.”

“For God's sake, don't say that, sir! To the point.
Can it now with fairness be denied that, in his beard, the
man-child prospectively possesses an appendix, not less
imposing than patriarchal; and for this goodly beard,
should we not by generous anticipation give the man-child,
even in his cradle, credit? Should we not now,
sir? respectfully I put it.”

“Yes, if like pig-weed he mows it down soon as it
shoots,” porcinely rubbing his stubble-chin against his
coon-skins.

“I have hinted at the analogy,” continued the other,
calmly disregardful of the digression; “now to apply it.
Suppose a boy evince no noble quality. Then generously
give him credit for his prospective one. Don't you
see? So we say to our patrons when they would fain
return a boy upon us as unworthy: `Madam, or sir,
(as the case may be) has this boy a beard?' `No.'
`Has he, we respectfully ask, as yet, evinced any noble
quality?' `No, indeed.' `Then, madam, or sir, take him
back, we humbly beseech; and keep him till that same
noble quality sprouts; for, have confidence, it, like the
beard, is in him.'”

“Very fine theory,” scornfully exclaimed the bachelor,
yet in secret, perhaps, not entirely undisturbed by
these strange new views of the matter; “but what trust
is to be placed in it?”

“The trust of perfect confidence, sir. To proceed.
Once more, if you please, regard the man-child.”

“Hold!” paw-like thrusting out his bearskin arm,
“don't intrude that man-child upon me too often. He

who loves not bread, dotes not on dough. As little of
your man-child as your logical arrangements will
admit.”

“Anew regard the man-child,” with inspired intrepidity
repeated he with the brass-plate, “in the perspective
of his developments, I mean. At first the man-child
has no teeth, but about the sixth month—am I right,
sir?”

“Don't know anything about it.”

“To proceed then: though at first deficient in teeth,
about the sixth month the man-child begins to put forth
in that particular. And sweet those tender little puttings-forth
are.”

“Very, but blown out of his mouth directly, worthless
enough.”

“Admitted. And, therefore, we say to our patrons returning
with a boy alleged not only to be deficient in
goodness, but redundant in ill: `The lad, madam or sir,
evinces very corrupt qualities, does he?' `No end to
them.' `But, have confidence, there will be; for pray,
madam, in this lad's early childhood, were not those
frail first teeth, then his, followed by his present sound,
even, beautiful and permanent set. And the more objectionable
those first teeth became, was not that, madam,
we respectfully submit, so much the more reason
to look for their speedy substitution by the present
sound, even, beautiful and permanent ones.' `True,
true, can't deny that.' `Then, madam, take him back,
we respectfully beg, and wait till, in the now swift
course of nature, dropping those transient moral blemishes

you complain of, he replacingly buds forth in the
sound, even, beautiful and permanent virtues.'”

“Very philosophical again,” was the contemptuous
reply—the outward contempt, perhaps, proportioned to
the inward misgiving. “Vastly philosophical, indeed, but
tell me—to continue your analogy—since the second
teeth followed—in fact, came from—the first, is there
no chance the blemish may be transmitted?”

“Not at all.” Abating in humility as he gained in
the argument. “The second teeth follow, but do not
come from, the first; successors, not sons. The first
teeth are not like the germ blossom of the apple, at
once the father of, and incorporated into, the growth it
foreruns; but they are thrust from their place by the
independent undergrowth of the succeeding set—an
illustration, by the way, which shows more for me than
I meant, though not more than I wish.”

“What does it show?” Surly-looking as a thundercloud
with the inkept unrest of unacknowledged conviction.

“It shows this, respected sir, that in the case of any
boy, especially an ill one, to apply unconditionally the
saying, that the `child is father of the man', is, besides
implying an uncharitable aspersion of the race, affirming
a thing very wide of—”

“—Your analogy,” like a snapping turtle.

“Yes, respected sir.”

“But is analogy argument? You are a punster.”

“Punster, respected sir?” with a look of being aggrieved.

“Yes, you pun with ideas as another man may with
words.”

“Oh well, sir, whoever talks in that strain, whoever
has no confidence in human reason, whoever despises
human reason, in vain to reason with him. Still, respected
sir,” altering his air, “permit me to hint that,
had not the force of analogy moved you somewhat, you
would hardly have offered to contemn it.”

“Talk away,” disdainfully; “but pray tell me what
has that last analogy of yours to do with your intelligence
office business?”

“Everything to do with it, respected sir. From that
analogy we derive the reply made to such a patron as,
shortly after being supplied by us with an adult servant,
proposes to return him upon our hands; not that, while
with the patron, said adult has given any cause of dissatisfaction,
but the patron has just chanced to hear
something unfavorable concerning him from some
gentleman who employed said adult long before, while
a boy. To which too fastidious patron, we, taking said
adult by the hand, and graciously reintroducing him to
the patron, say: `Far be it from you, madam, or sir,
to proceed in your censure against this adult, in anything
of the spirit of an ex-post-facto law. Madam, or
sir, would you visit upon the butterfly the sins of the
caterpillar? In the natural advance of all creatures, do
they not bury themselves over and over again in the
endless resurrection of better and better? Madam, or sir,
take back this adult; he may have been a caterpillar,
but is now a butterfly.”

“Pun away; but even accepting your analogical pun,
what does it amount to? Was the caterpillar one creature,
and is the butterfly another? The butterfly is the
caterpillar in a gaudy cloak; stripped of which, there
lies the impostor's long spindle of a body, pretty much
worm-shaped as before.”

“You reject the analogy. To the facts then. You
deny that a youth of one character can be transformed
into a man of an opposite character. Now then—yes,
I have it. There's the founder of La Trappe, and Ignatius
Loyola; in boyhood, and someway into manhood,
both devil-may-care bloods, and yet, in the end, the
wonders of the world for anchoritish self-command.
These two examples, by-the-way, we cite to such patrons
as would hastily return rakish young waiters upon
us. `Madam, or sir—patience; patience,' we say; `good
madam, or sir, would you discharge forth your cask of
good wine, because, while working, it riles more or less?
Then discharge not forth this young waiter; the good in
him is working.' `But he is a sad rake.' `Therein is
his promise; the rake being crude material for the
saint.'”

“Ah, you are a talking man—what I call a wordy
man. You talk, talk.”

“And with submission, sir, what is the greatest judge,
bishop or prophet, but a talking man? He talks, talks.
It is the peculiar vocation of a teacher to talk. What's
wisdom itself but table-talk? The best wisdom in this
world, and the last spoken by its teacher, did it not
literally and truly come in the form of table-talk?”

“You, you you!” rattling down his rifle.

“To shift the subject, since we cannot agree. Pray,
what is your opinion, respected sir, of St. Augustine?”

“St. Augustine? What should I, or you either, know
of him? Seems to me, for one in such a business, to say
nothing of such a coat, that though you don't know a
great deal, indeed, yet you know a good deal more than
you ought to know, or than you have a right to know,
or than it is safe or expedient for you to know, or
than, in the fair course of life, you could have honestly
come to know. I am of opinion you should be served
like a Jew in the middle ages with his gold; this knowledge
of yours, which you haven't enough knowledge to
know how to make a right use of, it should be taken
from you. And so I have been thinking all along.”

“You are merry, sir. But you have a little looked
into St. Augustine I suppose.

“St. Augustine on Original Sin is my text book.
But you, I ask again, where do you find time or inclination
for these out-of-the-way speculations? In fact,
your whole talk, the more I think of it, is altogether unexampled
and extraordinary.”

“Respected sir, have I not already informed you that
the quite new method, the strictly philosophical one, on
which our office is founded, has led me and my associates
to an enlarged study of mankind. It was my fault,
if I did not, likewise, hint, that these studies directed
always to the scientific procuring of good servants of all
sorts, boys included, for the kind gentlemen, our patrons

—that these studies, I say, have been conducted equally
among all books of all libraries, as among all men of all
nations. Then, you rather like St. Augustine, sir?”

“Excellent genius!”

“In some points he was; yet, how comes it that under
his own hand, St. Augustine confesses that, until his
thirtieth year, he was a very sad dog?”

“A saint a sad dog?”

“Not the saint, but the saint's irresponsible little
forerunner—the boy.”

“All boys are rascals, and so are all men,” again flying
off at his tangent; “my name is Pitch; I stick to
what I say.”

“Ah, sir, permit me—when I behold you on this mild
summer's eve, thus eccentrically clothed in the skins of
wild beasts, I cannot but conclude that the equally
grim and unsuitable habit of your mind is likewise but
an eccentric assumption, having no basis in your genuine
soul, no more than in nature herself.”

“Well, really, now—really,” fidgeted the bachelor,
not unaffected in his conscience by these benign personalities,
“really, really, now, I don't know but that I
may have been a little bit too hard upon those five and
thirty boys of mine.”

“Glad to find you a little softening, sir. Who knows
now, but that flexile gracefulness, however questionable
at the time of that thirtieth boy of yours, might have
been the silky husk of the most solid qualities of maturity.
It might have been with him as with the ear of the
Indian corn.”

“Yes, yes, yes,” excitedly cried the bachelor, as the
light of this new illustration broke in, “yes, yes; and
now that I think of it, how often I've sadly watched my
Indian corn in May, wondering whether such sickly,
half-eaten sprouts, could ever thrive up into the stiff,
stately spear of August.”

“A most admirable reflection, sir, and you have only,
according to the analogical theory first started by our office,
to apply it to that thirtieth boy in question, and see
the result. Had you but kept that thirtieth boy—been
patient with his sickly virtues, cultivated them, hoed
round them, why what a glorious guerdon would have
been yours, when at last you should have had a St. Augustine
for an ostler.”

“Really, really—well, I am glad I didn't send him to
jail, as at first I intended.”

“Oh that would have been too bad. Grant he was
vicious. The petty vices of boys are like the innocent
kicks of colts, as yet imperfectly broken. Some boys
know not virtue only for the same reason they know
not French; it was never taught them. Established upon
the basis of parental charity, juvenile asylums exist by
law for the benefit of lads convicted of acts which, in
adults, would have received other requital. Why? Because,
do what they will, society, like our office, at bottom
has a Christian confidence in boys. And all this we
say to our patrons.”

“Your patrons, sir, seem your marines to whom you
may say anything,” said the other, relapsing. “Why
do knowing employers shun youths from asylums,

though offered them at the smallest wages? I'll none
of your reformado boys.”

“Such a boy, respected sir, I would not get for you,
but a boy that never needed reform. Do not smile, for
as whooping-cough and measles are juvenile diseases,
and yet some juveniles never have them, so are there
boys equally free from juvenile vices. True, for the
best of boys' measles may be contagious, and evil communications
corrupt good manners; but a boy with a
sound mind in a sound body—such is the boy I would
get you. If hitherto, sir, you have struck upon a peculiarly
bad vein of boys, so much the more hope now of
your hitting a good one.”

“That sounds a kind of reasonable, as it were—a
little so, really. In fact, though you have said a great
many foolish things, very foolish and absurd things, yet,
upon the whole, your conversation has been such as
might almost lead one less distrustful than I to repose a
certain conditional confidence in you, I had almost added
in your office, also. Now, for the humor of it, supposing
that even I, I myself, really had this sort of conditional
confidence, though but a grain, what sort of a boy, in
sober fact, could you send me? And what would be
your fee?”

“Conducted,” replied the other somewhat loftily,
rising now in eloquence as his proselyte, for all his pretenses,
sunk in conviction, “conducted upon principles
involving care, learning, and labor, exceeding what is
usual in kindred institutions, the Philosophical Intelligence
Office is forced to charges somewhat higher than

customary. Briefly, our fee is three dollars in advance.
As for the boy, by a lucky chance, I have a very promising
little fellow now in my eye—a very likely little
fellow, indeed.”

“Honest?”

“As the day is long. Might trust him with untold
millions. Such, at least, were the marginal observations
on the phrenological chart of his head, submitted to me
by the mother.”

“How old?”

“Just fifteen.”

“Tall? Stout?”

“Uncommonly so, for his age, his mother remarked.”

“Industrious?”

“The busy bee.”

The bachelor fell into a troubled reverie. At last,
with much hesitancy, he spoke:

“Do you think now, candidly, that—I say candidly
—candidly—could I have some small, limited—some
faint, conditional degree of confidence in that boy?
Candidly, now?”

“Candidly, you could.”

“A sound boy? A good boy?”

“Never knew one more so.”

The bachelor fell into another irresolute reverie;
then said: “Well, now, you have suggested some
rather new views of boys, and men, too. Upon those
views in the concrete I at present decline to determine.
Nevertheless, for the sake purely of a scientific experiment,
I will try that boy. I don't think him an angel,

mind. No, no. But I'll try him. There are my three
dollars, and here is my address. Send him along this
day two weeks. Hold, you will be wanting the money
for his passage. There,” handing it somewhat reluctantly.

“Ah, thank you. I had forgotten his passage;” then,
altering in manner, and gravely holding the bills, continued:
“Respected sir, never willingly do I handle
money not with perfect willingness, nay, with a certain
alacrity, paid. Either tell me that you have a perfect
and unquestioning confidence in me (never mind the boy
now) or permit me respectfully to return these bills.”

“Put 'em up, put 'em up!”

“Thank you. Confidence is the indispensable basis
of all sorts of business transactions. Without it, commerce
between man and man, as between country and
country, would, like a watch, run down and stop. And
now, supposing that against present expectation the lad
should, after all, evince some little undesirable trait, do
not, respected sir, rashly dismiss him. Have but patience,
have but confidence. Those transient vices will,
ere long, fall out, and be replaced by the sound, firm,
even and permanent virtues. Ah,” glancing shoreward,
towards a grotesquely-shaped bluff, “there's the Devil's
Joke, as they call it; the bell for landing will shortly
ring. I must go look up the cook I brought for the innkeeper
at Cairo.”